In the 1946 movie Humoresque, Joan Crawford describes John Garfield as “that rare animal, a New Yorker from New York.” It’s long been a joke that no one is actually from New York; you’re either an immigrant or you arrived in New York as a starry-eyed kid from the Midwest seeking big-city adventure. This meme used to be mainly true only of Manhattan, but it is more true today and applies to most of New York City. It’s rare to meet a white gentile who was actually born and raised in New York. Most of the white working class fled to New Jersey and Long Island in the 1970s and ‘80s. The only people you ever meet who are actually from New York are blacks and Jews.
The exception is Staten Island. Staten Island is a weird, 75%-white Noah’s Ark where you will still find real white New Yorkers from New York of the kind long gone in the other boroughs. It is the one remaining borough of New York City that still possesses something that could be described as a “white working class.” The closest thing to a white working class that you will find in the rest of New York are starving artists who will perform menial work while waiting for their big break. These people are usually middle-class transplants from elsewhere, however, so they are not actually working class and they are not real New Yorkers.
Staten Island is the least populous — half a million people — and arguably the least glamorous of the five New York boroughs. Manhattan is famous for many things: Broadway, Wall Street, the Empire State Building, and so on. Brooklyn is known for Coney Island, their famously distinct accent, and for being the “tough” part of New York. People know Queens as the middle-class part of New York City, where the Mets play and for being the setting for All in the Family. The Bronx is a dump and not exactly “glamorous,” but they can at least claim to be the home of the Yankees, the most iconic American sports franchise in the world. If you had to be known for one thing, that’s not a bad pick.
Staten Island is not known for very much in comparison. Aside from the Staten Island Stapletons’ fleeting three-year career in the NFL during 1929-1932, they’ve never had a major league sports franchise. There are no famous buildings there. The most well-known Staten Island success stories are ‘90s rap group Wu-Tang Clan, Saturday Night Live cast member Pete Davidson, and ‘80s hair metal band White Lion. If it is famous for anything at all, it is for the Staten Island Ferry, which transports people from Staten Island to Manhattan and back. It is probably this ferry which makes Staten Island the oasis that it is.
Staten Island is the only borough that you can’t get to by subway. You have to take the ferry. The ferry is a much more elegant and enjoyable way to get there and back, but it is not nearly as convenient as the subway. This is one of the reasons that Staten Island has never become a haven for the starving artist transplant types: It’s too much of a hassle to commute to where “the action” is.
This unique geographical characteristic probably also keeps out a lot of minorities as well. Whites are a seafaring people, so getting place to place by boat feels perfectly natural to us — but blacks associate boats with slave ships. What else would they associate boats with? The only seafaring blacks I’m aware of are the Somali pirates. If you ask the average black guy to think of a boat, he’s going to think of a slave ship. And what if there was an accident and the boat sank? None of them know how to swim or follow instructions.
Liberal New Yorkers look at Staten Island with much the same scorn and derision that they look at Red State America. If anything, liberal New Yorkers look at Staten Islanders as lower than Southern rednecks, since they at least have the excuse of living in nowheresville, but Staten Islanders live within eyeshot of globohomo headquarters. Staten Islanders cannot therefore claim ignorance of Talmudic law.
When New Yorkers joke about Staten Island, the punchline usually has something to do with its people being uncharacteristically reactionary. It’s the place where the spirit of Archie Bunker’s New York still lives on. In 2020 Donald Trump got 22.6% of the vote in New York City as a whole, but he won Staten Island with 57% of the vote. This reactionary impulse has been with Staten Island since the beginning. During the American War of Independence, Staten Island remained loyal to the British throughout the entire war and even repelled an attempted invasion by Continental forces.
The way liberals talk about Staten Island, you would think it was a place where bands of roving white hoodlums with switchblades and bicycle chains walk the streets, looking for minorities to terrorize. In fact, Staten Island is a nice place. It’s clean and it has the lowest crime rate of any of the five New York boroughs.
Thus, as a venue for Nick Fuentes’ latest anti-vax rally, Staten Island was a pretty good choice, since at least it was taking place on friendly-ish ground. Whatever the locals may think of Nick Fuentes, they are certainly no fans of Antifa. However, this rally was to be a trial run for another rally this Saturday which will be taking place in the belly of the beast: Manhattan. The Upper East Side, in fact.
This Staten Island event was announced on relatively short notice. I first heard about it on Monday. I was curious to see how many people Fuentes could get to Staten Island on a weekday during working hours on two days’ notice. Staten Island is difficult to get to even if you live in the area unless you have a car, when it’s only inconvenient.
I got off the train at the Dongan Hills stop. One of the first things I saw on the street was a van with a “Fuck Biden” bumper sticker. I was definitely on Staten Island.
From there it was about a 15-minute walk to the Staten Island University Hospital. Fuentes chose this location because the hospital had recently fired 1,400 workers for failing to comply with the vaccine mandate.
This is part of a strategy Fuentes has been pursuing since Stop the Steal. He has made it a policy that when he makes public appearances, rather than do it as a “save the white race” rally, he does it under the banner of an issue that has wide support among mainstream conservatives. Last year, he did some Stop the Steal rallies in relation to election fraud. Now he is doing rallies against vaccine mandates. A lot of people hoped that with Trump out of the way, White Nationalists would inherit a lot of that energy that he was getting, but it appears that most of it went into the Covid-skeptic movement — and QAnon is taking far longer to die than many hoped or predicted. Under the circumstances, Fuentes is making the tactical decision to go where the normies are.
As I approached the event, the first thing I noticed was cops. There were lots and lots and lots of cops all over the place. I would estimate that there was maybe one cop for every four attendees. I was curious to find out what the Antifa presence would be like, as there was chatter about it on Twitter. But if Antifa had been planning any kind of major disruption, they likely would have been scared off by the enormous police presence at an event that was already taking place in a conservative stronghold. That said, I’m sure Antifa had spies in attendance, but there was no attempt to shut the event down.
I got there just as Fuentes began speaking. He stood surrounded by throngs of supporters, wearing a bulletproof vest and speaking through a bullhorn. Spirits were high. There were about a hundred groypers herded together into a fenced-off area.
One of the first things that struck me about the crowd was a conspicuous lack of red MAGA hats in sight. Instead, there a sea of royal blue America First chapeaux atop the heads of the groyper faithful. Seeing that the remnants of the MAGA movement are quickly and quietly being coopted by Con Inc., it appears that Fuentes is deliberately carving out an identity and aesthetic that is distinct from the Trump brand.
At the end of the fenced-off area were four groypers holding a gigantic American First flag so that the people driving by could see who they were looking at. Above the crowd was a huge yellow flag with the image of a broken syringe and the words, “I Will Not Comply.” Every now and then, a passing car would give a honk of approval.
I guess 100-ish people was not too bad of a turnout under the circumstances. And given that it is a warmup for a bigger rally on Saturday, I imagine a lot of people passed on this one. The only Groyper General in attendance was Jayden McNeal. I’m told Baked Alaska will be at the Saturday event.
Fuentes thundered through his speech on the evils of the vaccine mandate agenda. This, he says, is the hill to die on. I’m not going to give you a detailed rundown of his speech. If you watch his show, you already know his position on Covid and the vax. In brief, he thinks one is a hoax and the other is dangerous.
As Fuentes continued, I looked around to see who else was there. Outside the fenced-off area was a scattered array of people who could have been friends, enemies, or curious onlookers. One person in attendance was definitely not a friend of the Groyper movement: Jewish SPLC hate-watcher Michael Edison Hayden. He spent much of the rally attempting to heckle Nick, mostly by accusing him of being a fed. The crowd responded to Hayden by calling him a fag. At one point in his speech, Fuentes talked about the need for Christianity. Hayden stood up and yelled something. Nick told his audience, “Don’t listen to him. He’s going to Hell.”
There seemed to be at least a few normie anti-vaxxers in the crowd. I saw one Asian lady and her friend.
There were a couple of blacks; I couldn’t figure out if they were based black groypers or undercover Antifa. Plus there were about a dozen people from the press.
After Nick’s speech, he stuck around for about an hour to shake hands, take pictures, and sign autographs. Almost immediately after Fuentes’ speech ended, Hayden ran up to the fenced-off area and spent a few minutes yelling at Fuentes, repeatedly asking him, “Have you been subpoenaed by the January 6 committee?” and “Are you cooperating with federal authorities?” Nick did not respond.
I got to talk to Nick for a few minutes. He acknowledged and expressed gratitude for the amount of guff I have endured for supporting him. It’s true; as Counter-Currents’ most unapologetic Nick Fuentes apologist, I have taken my share of slings and arrows for the groyper cause.
When I heard Fuentes was in New York for a week, I was wondering if he might be in talks with some New York media outlets. New York is home to Anthony Cumia’s Compound Media, which is home to a few Killstream regulars. There is also the New York-based Gas Digital, which specializes in “based comedians” and has produced Davis Smith and Tim Dillon. Nick assured me that he was in New York just to do the anti-vax rallies. Fuentes appears to be committed to staying independent for the time being. He has recently launched Cozy.TV, an in-house censorship-proof streaming site, and is adding new people.
I asked if he is still serious about giving Andrew Anglin a channel on Cozy. Someone had asked him in a superchat a few weeks ago if he would let Anglin on, and he said he was open to the idea at the time, but I hadn’t heard anything more since. Nick confirmed to me personally that he is still down for an America First/Daily Stormer crossover. People need to hold all feet necessary to the fire until this happens.
From what I could tell, most of the groypers seemed to know some of the other groypers. There were a lot of pairs and groups of friends. It looked as if a lot of people were there as much to meet up with online friends as they were there to see Nick. Either that, or people were making friends while there.
After a while, some other hecklers arrived on the scene, this time from the other end of the political spectrum. Infamous ex-Proud Boy wignat provocateur Jovi Val arrived and started yelling about Nick Fuentes being a grifter and rambling some incoherent stuff about Milo. He was there with a Hispanic friend who was wearing a Spanish flag mask. Why the two wignat intruders just happened to both be non-white, I don’t know. I guess they were doing the jobs regular wignat Americans won’t do. What a crazy world.
If Jovi Val does anything other than these horrendous bad optics public stunts, I am not aware of it. Does he have a podcast? Write anything? Does he do any other activism? As far as I know, this is all he does. In 2019, he made news around the world after he got his nose broken in Union Square for holding a Confederate flag and wearing a swastika necklace. When I covered a groyper event last year in Washington, DC, Jovi Val showed up with a Francoist flag, but the wignat interloper was roundly expelled. Last May, he drove a van covered in Palestinian flags and with “goy power” written on the front and “Hitler was right” on the sides though a pro-Israel rally in Florida. Clearly, he is a graduate of the Patrick Little School of Optics.
Jovi Val just came up to America First rally in Staten Island to Confront Nick Fuentes. He was told to leave as the crowd chanted “Fag! Fag! Fag!” #HappeningNow outside Staten Island University Hospital pic.twitter.com/TyyChkJ2f3
— TRUMP_MAGA (@Trump_MAGA2024) November 10, 2021
The groypers were having none of Jovi’s shenanigans on this day, and he had to be escorted away by the police as chants of “Fag! Fag! Fag!” rang out from the groyper faithful. As soon as he was away, he was approached by journalists who probably assumed that he was some kind of anti-racist activist.
The weirdest part was yet to come. There was a tiny black girl there. She was one of the people who I couldn’t determine whether she was Antifa or not. She was sitting on the ground, drawing a picture of Nick.
She then took the picture and approached Nick with it. I’m thinking, “This has to be a setup.” A black female fan? How many black girls have a fangirl crush on ADL and SPLC Certified™ white supremacist Nick Fuentes? If Nick is known for anything, it’s that he’s a racist and a misogynist. He does not have a romantic bone in his body, and it is impossible to have spent any amount of time watching his show without knowing that.
It was either too weird, too perfect, or too perfectly weird to be real, and therefore had to be a setup. If it was a trick, Nick didn’t fall for it. He took the picture, acted flattered, and sounded appreciative that she had made the effort. I don’t know how sincere he was, but he was convincing enough to put a smile on the girl’s face.
Thus, Fuentes’ Staten Island rally seemed to go off without a hitch. It remains to be seen what will happen this Saturday on ZOG’s home turf of Manhattan. Hopefully, Wednesday’s Staten Island event won’t turn out to be the torchlight march ahead of Saturday’s Unite the Right.
Note
[1] Kenneth Minogue: Alien Powers: The Pure Theory of Ideology (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1985), 58.
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11 comments
I am not sure if anti-vaxxers count as normies, but resistance to the mandates is definitely the most *pressing* issue of our time, and it is where we will find our natural allies. If you read through the comments at Children’s Health Defense, they sound just like Unz readers on a Mike Whitney thread. I applaud Fuentes for recognizing and acting upon the true facts on the ground. I question only his choice of NYC, where organized opposition to the mandate is determinedly multi-racial, with black activists like Kevin Jenkins playing a prominent role. Then too, if NYC is where the protest movement in North America is beginning to coalesce, why go to Kansas?
Good description of SI. In 2004 I took the train to Pleasant Plains to explore on foot the island’s west side, which is remote and sparsely populated to this day. I had to use the facilities of a bar near the station and bought a beer for the privilege. While drinking I heard the conversation of the two other patrons. One said he was seeing a girl who worked in “the city.” The other said he hadn’t been to the city in 10 years. Far from looking down at them as hicks, I was impressed. If you didn’t have to go to the city to work, or to be a tourist, there were and are few reasons, especially now, for anyone to go. I wonder if that bar, if it’s still there, would actually ask for your “passport” to enter.
It’s clear the vaccine both rapidly becomes less effective and is likely hazardous to the injectees health. Anyone who sees this and then decides the solution is more boosters is too far gone. This has gone far enough. Joe Biden’s mandates are deservedly deeply unpopular. They don’t care, and they don’t care if people are harmed by the vaccine. This is the direction we must go in.
Unless I read it somewhere else, the upcoming Saturday rally is not organized by Nick Fuentes. He and the Groypers will be in attendance, but it’s being organized by “normie” Trump supporters. That’s why it’ll be bigger.
Thanks for the up front report.
The Covid regime is an issue around which national-populists can organize. The lockdown and mandatory vaccinations have alienated large numbers of people and there appears to be a traditional “don’t tread on me” sentiment involved in the protests. Also, since many of the proponents of the lockdown appear to be on the Left, it’s a way to focus energies against them.
One thing to consider is how to coordinate the protests worldwide. There’s a lot of people taking it to the streets, especially in Europe and Australia. There might be a way to connect these protests with the emerging opposition to critical race theory, the calls for secession, and so forth and so on.
Stay tuned…
A reasonably fair treatment of Staten Islanders from the BBC News, August 2018: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utVtDh4TXEQ
Those photographs are wonderful. I can look at them over and over and see interesting things I didn’t get at first glance. Little things in the background, details of all kinds, which all add up. You don’t necessarily grasp this when looking at the motion picture version of the same scenes.
Not sure if Fuentes teaming up with Anglin is the best idea. I think it’s one thing to be critical of left wing Jewish power/subversion and a whole other thing to be a full blown Nazi. If you’re going to be an “anti-Semite” at least by graceful and intellectual about it, like Kevin MacDonald, who I don’t even think is anti-Semitic per se. Even Jared Taylor has criticized The Daily Stormer. Not to mention, I think Anglin has a couple million of dollars he owes from being on the receiving end of lawfare. I’m not a lawyer, but I think any sort of business venture with Anglin, Fuentes could see an asset seizure to pay off the lawsuit. I recall something like that happening in “Bonfire of Vanities.” If that’s not convincing enough, get a load of what he said about women, “Look, I hate women. I think they deserve to be beaten, raped and locked in cages.” This is not someone I’d want to even be remotely associated with.
Anglin is the worst of both worlds. He embraces elements of the the Hollywood Nazi villain caricature without standing by any of the actual principles of National Socialism. He attacks the best kinds of people, and supports the worst. The people he attracts are antisocial, ill-adapted loser types. I have no idea why Fuentes would tie himself to Anglin in any way.
Getting White people riled up so they can be destroyed in detail is anti-White. ‘Conservatives’ are enamoured with political theater because ‘a good show’ is more important than them than implementing successful policies or creating durable political action organizations.
You cannot defeat calculated strategy with personal pugnacity. – David Hines, How The Right Can Organize Like The Left
Because Brooklyn real estate has become so astronomical, poor Staten Island has been getting overrun by shitlibs and Third World immigrants from everywhere for 10 years. We even elected a millennial hipster from Brooklyn for Congress 2 years ago, something that would have been unthinkable in the past. What was once a cohesive and unique culture and community has been damaged by our own great replacement.
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